Standard Anxiety

THIRTY SUMMERS AGO, the owner of a Jewish resort in the Catskills hired a skinny, crazy kid named Mel to amuse the middle-aged couples lounging around the swimming pool. That proprietor could hardly have known it, but in hiring that kid he unleashed a comic force of staggering proportions upon the Borscht Belt and eventually, the rest of the world. Mel Brooks was plainly crazy. He would do anything to get a laugh, and while his written gags frequently bore the stamp of genius, he often resorted to simply slapstick or "dirty" words. Either way, audiences loved him or his material, and today Brooks is perhaps the most successful comedian in America. His manic energy and his sense of humor carried him from Lake Kiamesha to television and finally, inevitably, to Hollywood, from whence he has just released his sixth film, High Anxiety.

A great comedian generally has a desire continually to improve his material. A random example to the contrary is Henny Youngman, who has used the same jokes since he appeared in vaudeville. Brooks never gives up; in his films he is apparently searching for a better balance between sight gags, one-liners, and developed routines. He has come close before--The Producers, his first film, is one of the funniest movies ever made, and Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein were outrageous parodies of two moribund film genres. But his last film, Silent Movie, was a bomb, although it reflected a willingness to do the unconventional. Silent Movie relied too much on slapstick (what do you expect from a movie with no dialogue?) and as a result became quite tedious. Brooks learned from that experience, for High Anxiety has the most developed plot of any Brooks film since The Producers and a minimum of sight gags, and although it ultimately fails to be very entertaining, Brooks has made a pretty good try.

Brooks freaks who love to see people farting or punching out horses and those who expect outrageously funny dialogue will be equally disappointed by High Anxiety. The movie, dedicated to Alfred Hitchcock and filled with little imitations of the master, just isn't very funny, except in a few spots. Once again, the film is a Brooks extravaganza--he wrote, produced, directed, starred and out-did himself this by writing the words and music to the title song. You'll never guess who sings it, too.

If you can, imagine Mel Brooks as a Harvard professor of Psychology (and why not?--his lectures would be great). Dr. Richard H. Thorndike, Harvard prof and Nobel Prize-winner, is called away from Cambridge to take over as director of the Psycho-Neurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous in sunny California. On the way to the institute, he is told that his predecessor died under suspicious circumstances. Shortly thereafter he meets two of his associates at the institute, Dr. Montague and Nurse Diesel, played by two Brooks regulars, Harvey Korman and Cloris Leachman. Korman, as the neurotic, weak-willed doctor, seems to be trapped in reruns of the Carol Burnett Show. Leachman repeats her role as Frau Blucher in Young Frankenstein. Looking for all the world like a wrestler and sporting a pair of somehow dangerous-looking breasts, Nurse Diesel cruelly controls the place, running it the way she dominates her lover. Dr. Montague, whom she beats every night. Believe it or not, the bondage scene is actually funny. Diesel and Montague apparently trap rich patients in the hospital, bleeding their families for all the money they can get.

MEANWHILE, DR THORNDIKE, with the help of his old professor, Dr. Lillolman, tries to cope with his own particular neurosis--fear of heights known as High Anxiety. Montague and Diesel find out about his condition by chance, and the plot thickens into a conventional murder mystery, with comedy ostensibly subbing for the mystery. Thorndike is cleverly framed, but aided by the daughter of an imprisoned patient (Madeline Kahn), he shakes the police and manages to clear his name and even overcome the ravages of High Anxiety.

Despite all the shenanigans--and there are lots of them--High Anxiety somehow fails. In his search for a less manic style of humor Brooks has gone too far in the other direction; his own characterization provides an apt example. Thorndike, as played by Brooks, is a very serious gent, with all the dignity that befits a Harvard faculty member (tenured, of course) and a Nobel laureate. Thorndike radiates a sort of nervous rationality, except during his seizures of High Anxiety, so most of his good lines seem like deadpanned straight lines. Only once is Brooks himself very funny--in a scene with Kahn in which they dress and speak like an old Yiddishe couple in order to get past security cops at an airport-"Vattaya tink, ve smuggle dope in da celery?" Significantly, this bit of shtick reflects Brooks's earlier days as a Jewish comedian. The voice he uses in that scene is the same one he used as the 2000-Year-Old Man back in 1960. For all his attempts to change his patter, Brooks has to revert to his old stand-by to get the best laugh of the film.

High Anxiety just doesn't quite make it. Brooks reminds you of an outfielder with a powerful but inaccurate arm--his throws are always worth watching, but they don't always come near home plate. This film will be remembered--if it is remembered at all--as a minor work in Mel Brooks's prolific career.